Give a Boy a Gun

This powerful story, direct from today's headlines, is told in snatches of interviews, emails, and journal entries taken from teachers, parents, and townspeople. This is the story of two boys who take their high school hostage and start meting out revenge for years of bullying and humiliation. The author presents everyone's point of view without taking sides. One of the most resonating moments comes when a girl from the "popular" set states that high school has always been that way--you just have to live through it. You find yourself thinking, but why does it have to be the same? This would be a great book for young people to read and discuss. There are some outstanding readers among the cast. Suzanne Toren is especially good as the calm, insightful teacher, Betsy Bates, and the college student doing the interviews, Denise Shipley. The children's voices sound so authentic and real that it's especially chilling to hear them discussing these horrific events. D.G. 2002 YALSA Selection (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

September 4, 2000
Like Virginia Walter in Making Up Megaboy, Strasser (How I Changed My Life) explores the psyche of adolescents who use handguns to violent ends. Unfortunately, the format used here detracts from the central drama--10th-graders Gary Searle and Brendan Lawlor holding their classmates hostage with firearms and bombs. A portentous author's note ("One of the things I dislike most about guns in our society is that... they rob children of what we used to think of as a childhood") prefaces an excerpt from Gary's suicide note, which is followed by comments from one Denise Shipley, who is studying journalism at the state university and returns to Middletown High "determined not to leave again until I understood what had happened there." The bulk of the novel is comprised of quotes Denise has collected from, among others, the two 10th-graders' parents, teachers and classmates, including nemesis Sam Flach, a football player whose knees they shatter with bullets. These quotes, however, seem arbitrarily arranged into sections; scattered and disconnected, the quotes build little momentum and the overall effect is numbing. Running along the foot of many of the pages are distracting excerpts from the media, Internet postings and statistics from unattributed sources (e.g., "The number of kids killed by firearms has quadrupled in the past ten years"). The revelation in Denise's closing note (that she is Gary's stepsister) and the author's "Final Thoughts" ("It will be your job to keep these ideas alive") provide a heavy-handed ending that may be more off-putting than eye-opening. Ages 12-up.